We recalled many a cascade among the Alps, where from remote
heights the small avalanches of snowy water form comet-like
streamers of rarest beauty. We saw again the shimmering rainbow
mist of others more remote, whose murmurs died away in the
gloomy depth of some Italian forest.
Soon we were gazing at distant peaks that had such a savage
aspect as to again call forth comparisons. Balsam fir, pine,
hemlock, maple, birch, and beech were the principal forest
trees. Lakes gleamed like silver mirrors in the lap of wild
rugged hills that stretched far away. We saw huge rocks that had
fallen from above as if shattered in the original upheaval of
the range, presenting sharp, forcible outlines and rugged facets
of shadow so striking in comparison with the flowing outlines of
the Catskills or Blue Ridge. The road wound back and forth as it
climbed the stony wilderness and soon unfolded to our view a
picture of utter desolation. We had just emerged from a stretch
of road lined as far as the eye could see on either side with
ash, hemlock, birch, beech, and balsam fir. Here we rested among
cool shadows, where beautifully fronded ferns rose all about.
Weary pedestrians had fallen asleep beneath their cooling
shadows and groups of boy scouts pitched their tents along this
highway.
Our eyes fell upon a sign that read like this: "A careless
smoker caused the fire that destroyed thousands of acres of
these forests. You love the forests. Help keep them green by
being careful about your fires." Looking forward we beheld a
vast and awful scene of desolation. Miles and miles on either
side of the road stretched that sea of blackened stumps and
charred logs where once the evergreens rose heavenward with all
their wealth of whispering leaves. Blackened stubs rose all
around as if they were huge exclamation points or pointing
fingers of accusation at the carelessness and thoughtlessness of
one individual.
Carelessness! How that word rang in our ears as we journeyed
through this lonely region, with all its grandeur and beauty
gone! Here we realized the kindly and beneficent influence of
streams and trees upon mountain scenery. True, mountains may be
grand without forests, but it is the grandeur of death we behold
in the vast untrodden fields of the show-clad Alps. Forests and
streams give life, fragrance, and beauty to those rough forms as
a pure soul adds beauty to the countenance of man. Only heated
waves of air rose from the fiery rocks and road around us, whose
shimmering lines made a fit perspective to such a scene. No
mossy rock where one could sit and listen to the singing birds;
no ancient trees through which the fragrant west wind could sing
its songs of rest and contentment; no purifying river where it
was once so pleasant for man to linger before going back to the
heat and smoke of the city; all because of one man's
carelessness. How much of sorrow and crime is in that word; what
failures, what wrecks of humanity stranded along the steep
precipice of that mountain.
Who would even want to climb those blackened summits? The
elevation would only make the view more terrible. The thousands
of travellers who pass this way were all affected by these
unsightly monuments to one man's carelessness, proving that "Man
liveth not to himself alone."
As we emerged from that scene of heat and desolation, a prayer
trembled upon every lip and its only theme was, "Lord, help us
to be careful."
What an awful spectacle that vast stretch of burning forest must
have presented! We shall quote from Headley, who witnessed such
a scene in these mountains: "One night the whole mountain was
wrapped in a fiery mantle, a mighty bosom of fire from which
rose waving columns and lofty turrets of flame. Trees a hundred
feet high and five and six and eight feet in circumference, were
on fire from the root to the top. Vast pyramids of flame, now
surging in eddies of air that caught them, now bending as if
about to yield the struggle, then lifting superior to the foe
and dying, martyr-like, in the vast furnace. Shorn of their
glory, their flashing, trembling forms stood crisping and
writhing in the blaze till, weary of their long suffering, they
threw themselves with a sudden and hurried sweep on the funeral
pile around. From the noble pine to the bending sprout, the
trees were aflame, while the crackling underbrush seemed a fiery
network cast over the prostrate forms of the monarchs of the
forest. When the fire caught a dry stump, it ran up the huge
trunk like a serpent, and coiling around the withered branches,
shot out its fiery tongue as if in mad joy over the raging
element below; while ever and anon came a crash that
reverberated far away in the gorges - the crash of falling trees,
at the overthrow of which there went up a cloud of sparks and
cinders and ashes. Sweeping along its terrible path, the tramp
of that conflagration filled the air with an uproar like the
bursting of billows on a rocky shore."
Across a narrow valley gigantic boulders seemed to have
accumulated and formed masses that appeared to be slowly
creeping downward. Farther away we beheld the serrated mountains
breaking into the wildest confusion of pinnacles, which rose
above the forest and relieved their masses of vivid green tints
like ruined castles along the Rhine, clothing them with an
atmosphere of age. Far up as the eye could reach, the broken
rocks were piled in huge chaos. "Here as your eye sweeps over
these fragments of a former earthquake, your imagination recalls
that remote period when the mountains were split like lightning-
riven oaks, and the great peaks swayed like trees in a blast and
the roar of a thousand storms rolled away from the yawning gulf,
into which precipices and forests went down with a deafening
crash as of a falling world."
The rugged sides of mountains often gave us views on almost as
grand a scale as that of the Alps.
